The aesthetic placement and period designation of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) and José Lezama Lima (1910-1976) are complicated issues among critics. Borges is obviously considered a predecessor of the Latin American literary “boom,” but despite that taxonomy his work transcends that definition and provides a foundation for new trends and styles, such as the “neobarroco” cultivated by Severo Sarduy. Lezama is considered part of the second wave of the “boom,” but his work feeds, stylistically, from the Spanish baroque. At the same time, Lezama’s daring treatment of homoeroticism and his revolutionary system of images place him after the “boom” in a narrative style that is postmodern. This study undertakes a thorough revision of external and internal issues, revealing the key linguistic and fictive elements that characterize both writers. Through discourse analysis and close reading, a poetic system is formulated, which incorporate features of the “neobarroco,” “boom” and postmodern narrative styles. This dissertation uses a polar structure to analyze both poetic visions and concludes that they are compatible and symmetrical. From this perspective, Borges and Lezama belong to the “core” of literature that centers its emphasis in the creation of a system versus other modes of writing in which mimetic function prevails. By doing this and by recycling world culture, they create postmodern myth: the new building material for Hispanic American literature. There are only a few studies that explore the works of Borges and Lezama within the context of Baroque aesthetics. For the first time, this dissertation offers a comprehensive analysis that considers their poetic visions at large. Besides the difference in perspective, defined as macro-spatial in Borges and micro-spatial in Lezama, there are many similarities in content and form. Both writers question the cause and effect relationship and the modern use of metaphor. They also share a redefinition of genre as well as a hedonistic approach to literature and culture. This kinship in poetic vision is revealed through the polar method used for this study, which proposes a new form of aesthetic placement and period designation.

This research seeks to establish a connection between the Hermetic tradition and the paranormal phenomena found in the works of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera --- “Un alma en pena” (1862), Póstumo el transmigrado (1872) and Póstumo el envirginado (1882) --- and Benito Pérez Galdós´s La sombra (1870) and “Celín” (1871). By establishing a Hegelian influence in their works, we uncover the possible origin of these paranormal events. German Idealism, so widespread during the first half of the 19th century, seems to have given both authors access to new currents of thought, allowing them to explore the union of art with the metaphysical. Thought is given precedence over sensation and Idealism prevails over Empiricism. Nature is now seen to be spiritual, as well as spatial, and among the major exponents of this movement is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), whose philosophy states that human knowledge is based on the “Idea,” a concept in which nature and spirit fuse. Hegel holds the traditional hermetic conception of philosophia perennis that supposes a universal truth common to every culture, religious tradition, and belief upheld by humankind. By examining the Hegelian influence in the works of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera and Benito Pérez Galdós, and relating major passages of their works to the precepts contained in the Corpus Hermeticum, the Emerald Tablet, and the Kybalion (1908), we uncover a subtle, sometimes explicit, presence of this esoteric doctrine, which allows the authors to explore the metaphysical side of life.

This dissertation is a critical re-assessment of Latin American philosophical tradition and its quest for an authentic philosophical identity. This re-evaluation is brought about through s distinct reading of the writings of the Peruvian Marxist, Jose Carlos Mariategui (1896-1930). The analysis which is exercised in this inquiry proposes that its philosophical production should not be considered as an obscure or secondary form of European philosophy, or in the most unfortunate case, as a radical denial of the latter's philosophical heritage. In attention to the central question concerning this dissertation it is claimed that a hermeneutic strategy of devising a re-interpretation of a single theorist could yield preferable and more illuminating results than just an extensive survey of the numerous philosophers who belong to the Latin American philosophical tradition. The "case study" which has been performed is that of the Peruvian Marxist Jose Carlos Mariategui (1895-1930). This dissertation argues that regardless of the broad range of studies on the writings of this Peruvian revolutionary thinker, there is still much to say about his idiosyncratic interpretation of the Peruvian society of his times and about his eminently anti-dogmatic conception of Marxism. In his own discursive practice he unveiled a critical response to the inherent and rigid determinism of the Marxist dogmatic orthodoxy widely accepted in Latin America and the rest of the world during his lifetime. His self-education and theoretical practice is described as a virtual "ingestion" of the 1920s Marxism and many other non-Marxist philosophical and theoretical notions which were critically transformed into an innovative and effectual thought replete with revolutionary relevance. The purpose in stressing this point in Mariategui's critical "adaptation" of Marxism is to accentuate the undeniable Eurocentric core of Marxism with which the Peruvian thinker had to contend. The reading of Mariategui which has been suggested, characterizes his theoretical practice as an immanent critique of Eurocentric Marxism. The relevance that Mariategui's writings bear for the problem of Latin American philosophy can be posited as a critique by practice of the traditional discourses of legitimation imposed on non-Eurocentric forms of thought.

This is a comparative study between Elizabeth Bishop and Carlos Drummond de Andrade which examines the trajectory of their poetry towards maturity. Inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin's notions on literary interpretation and intertextuality, this is an analysis that does not include the anxiety of influence, but rather explores the dialogic relations between poet (subject, personality), text, and context. A historicity of texts divided in four acts observes a progressive relation between poet and world. Beginning with the poet, the first act examines a trait of personality common to both poets—their gaucherie —and the projection of this trait in their art. The second and third acts successively discuss the relation between the poet and his/her family, the poet and the world, or more precisely, how the “strange idea of family” travels through poetry while it opens up more and more to a larger world. The final act closes the poet's dialectic with the world with a reading of crepuscular poems, combining a ripening of memories in the “creative time/space distance” with the voice of the mature poet.

This dissertation scrutinizes the writings of two major literary figures of early-twentieth-century Argentina and the United States with the aim of revealing how representations of motherhood function in their journalism as the site for a reformulation of the configuration of female subjectivities astride the private/public divide. Alfonsina Storni's and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's discursive acts of questioning socially and culturally validated mothering practices interrogate the classic divide, thus threatening to unsettle the very foundations of patriarchal ideology, which at least partly explains the neglect displayed towards this production. Alfonsina Storni's fame as Argentina's most famous "poetess of love" drastically overshadowed during her life and afterwards her journalistic contributions, which have as a result been largely overlooked by most scholarship on her work. In a similar vein, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's renown as a leading feminist thinker and reformer have traditionally led critics and scholars to focus almost exclusively on her utopian fiction, to the detriment of her journalistic endeavors. This study sets up a dialogue between the journalism of both women writers through the recuperation and examination of Storni's contributions to the "feminine" column of the journal La Nota and of Gilman's pieces for The Forerunner—the monthly she published entirely by herself. It is via a transgressive use of their journalism that both writers manage to critique the "domestication" of female subjectivity endemic to most existing accounts of motherhood, which cancel and negate the empowering possibilities of mothering practices for new forms of female agency. A close analysis of the discursive and rhetorical strategies employed by Alfonsina Storni and Charlotte Perkins Gilman thus helps unearth a neglected literary corpus and contributes at the same time to enriching new and innovative feminist analyses of mothering.

This study reveals the differences and similarities among U.S. Latino and Spanish American literatures. This is achieved through the juxtaposition and dialogue among Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban; Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory and Days of Obligation ; Rosario Castellano's Balún Canán, and Reinaldo Arenas' Antes que anochezca. In choosing texts from Mexico and Cuba we are seeking to reveal contrasts and links with the Chicano and Cuban-American narratives. Similarly, by selecting said texts and authors, there is a balance between issues of sexual gender and orientation, as well as in regards to the original language in which the texts were conceived. In their quest for identity from a marginal starting point, all four authors aim to create a response to hegemony. We approach these texts from the theoretical parameters of the studies of autobiography, with a special emphasis on Bildungsroman, since their protagonists see their self-formation as a process that would enable them to behave in a functional manner in the communities they are immersed. It is from this marginal position that values such as family and education question the power of traditional hegemony. Another element that subverts the establishment is the treatment of gender and sexuality in the texts. Since the protagonists' identity is conceived from a women's or a homosexual standpoint, traditional values are questioned. Finally, the analysis of the texts deals with their relationship to the imagined national space. Castellanos and Rodriguez approach the concept of nation though the indigenous question. Garcia and Arenas relate to Cuba by way of their comment on the Castrist Revolution. The different narratives of the self that make up this study place their voices in the intestitial space of the periphery. It is from that space that they address the center in a variety of ways.

During the 1920s and 30s, Mexican artists, teachers and state officials collaborated to stage educational plays in working class neighborhoods and rural communities in an effort to foster revolutionary citizens. The authors of live-action drama and hand-puppetry, known as teatro guiñol, infused their comedies and morality plays with the lessons of Mexico's revolution, endeavoring to improve rural life, strengthen class-consciousness and promote artistry among spectators young and old. In support of these initiatives, the Ministry of Education constructed thousands of open-air stages throughout rural Mexico, trained teachers to operate puppet theaters and disseminated scripts in its biweekly magazine. Many of the initiators of these projects viewed the role of theater in contradictory terms; it was a means both to elevate the standards of national culture as well as to nurture the folkloric artistry that was to be fountain of a "cosmic race." However, subsequent officials would manage theater as part and parcel of the state's adoption of socialist education, resulting in an important role for didactic theater in the state's repertoire of civic festival. Moreover, communist activists and avant-garde artists penned works of popular and puppet-theater inspired by the pedagogical practices of Russia's 1917 revolution and sought to further advance Mexico's social transformation. Engaging with literary critics, historians, and scholars of cultural studies, my study adds the role of lesser-known artists and intellectuals back into the mix to understand the multi-stranded, negotiated process that took place within the realm of post-revolutionary cultural politics. I examine play scripts written by teachers and artists, policy directives from mid-level ministry officials and reports filed by rural teachers. In this way I identify explicit and implicit moralizing messages in the plays, paying close attention to overlapping and colliding projects as well as narrative strategies and stylistic elements that relate to specific political agendas. Through an exploration of the context in which plays were produced and performed, my study shows how teachers and artists facilitated state projects even as they attempted to fashion didactic theater to suit their pragmatic needs, artistic sensibilities or more radical agendas.

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This dissertation explores the role of food representation and identity in Hispanic cultural production as they participate in establishing resistant agency despite historical contexts of authoritarian oppression. Accordingly, I explore subjectivity through the lens of food studies as it is grounded in notions of difference and therefore allows us to establish understandings of self and other - both personal and political. Next, I use this relationship between food and subjective experience to demonstrate how - regardless of the details in which it is manifested - in each of the historical contexts, the end result of food representation is a politics of resistance which in some fashion challenges the authoritarian status-quo. This is a process that occurs within the text, among characters and often manifested through a challenging of gender roles. However, these works (and specifically their varied historical trajectories) also demonstrate that the language of food extends far beyond the text, participating in larger projects that challenge, undermine, and rewrite the ethical atrocities committed during each of these oppressive political regimes. The novels and films included in this study were chosen to purposely span various geographical and historical time periods encompassing dictatorship, political transition, and those produced in democratic retrospect, which thus revisit an oppressive past in the Hispanic world. In chapter one, I explore food representation as it problematizes Puerto Rican identity in the face of United States imperialism in Luis Rafael Sánchez's Puerto Rican novel La Guaracha del Macho Camacho (1976). In chapter two, I analyze gastropoetics in Margarita Engle's US-Cuban novel Singing to Cuba (1993), as it establishes interconnectedness among the characters, which is juxtaposed with the ruptures created by Castro's communism. In chapter three, I investigate how culinary metaphor is used to rewrite Spain's history of Francoist oppression in Almudena Grandes' Spanish novel Inés y la alegría (2010). Finally, this study concludes with an analysis of food representation in two films that depict the transition from authoritarianism to democracy: Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón's La mitad del cielo (1986), a Spanish transitional piece, and Silvio Caiozzi's transitional film La luna en el espejo (1990), produced under Chilean dictatorship. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2014. / October 24, 2014. / Authoritarian Literature, Cultural Studies, Food Studies, Hispanic Literature, Transatlantic Literature, US-Latino Literature / Includes bibliographical references. / Enrique Álvarez, Professor Directing Dissertation; Bruce Boehrer, University Representative; Roberto Fernández, Committee Member; Lisa Wakamiya, Committee Member; Michael Uzendoski, Committee Member.

The aim of this thesis is focused on demonstrating the strong influence that Galician immigrants exerted on the Argentinian society at the beginning of the 20th century. In this transatlantic literary study, the bonds between the old and the new continent will be established by analysing some of the authors who became affected by immigration and exile conditions: Xosé Neira Vilas, Luis Seoane and Alfonso Rodríguez Castelao. The thesis will also examine the Argentinian literature related to immigration, and how some relevant authors accepted or rejected stereotyping. Both views, the one from exiles and the one from local authors, were blended in order to study the mutual influence that both cultures have had upon each other. There has not been much research regarding literary links between Galician and Argentinian authors, therefore the main purpose of this work is to search for connections among different writers from both sides of the Atlantic. In addition, the thesis analyses the importance of mainstream ideas such as nation, transnationalism and transculturation, and how these concepts have changed throughout history due to common experiences of migration and exile.